Dr Sara Chong Kwan

Biography

Sara is Senior Lecturer in Cultural and Historical Studies at London College of Fashion, UAL. She is coordinator for the undergraduate Final Year CHS work across the School of Design and Technology at LCF. She has developed and leads a 'Sensory Fashion' undergraduate Unit. Sara teaches across all undergraduate and postgraduate (MA) years and supervises both MA and PhD students.

Sara is Sensory Design Reviews Editor for the 'Senses and Society' Journal. She is also part of a collaborative practice led Research Project 'Fit But You Know It' that seeks to decolonise the fashion fitting process and its teaching within the art school.

Sara's research interests focus around the sensory and embodied dimensions of dress and fashion. Her most recent chapter is titled 'The Ambient Gaze: Sensory Atmosphere and the dressed body' in The book Revisiting the Gaze Edited by M. Laing and J. Willson, published by Bloomsbury. She has contributed to the SAGE Encyclopedia of Research Methods, and co-edited a journal special edition on ‘Fashion and Memory’ in Critical Studies in Fashion and Beauty 5/2. Sara's doctoral thesis is titled: Making Sense of Everyday Dress: Integrating multi-sensory experience within our understanding of contemporary dress in the UK.

Sara has convened a series of 'Sensory Roundtables' and co-organised a number of conferences, notably the ‘Fashion and the Senses Symposium’ at LCF.

In her previous career, Sara worked in magazine publishing, and gained a first class degree in Menswear Design from Central St Martins before co-owning an independent designer clothing store in Brighton.